leftwikiaorg-20200213-history
1955
1954 1955 1956 Events * Austrian State Treaty signed. Austria become officially neutral. * China's population is 614.65 million. * Last time Republicans would hold control of the Senate until Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. * Floating Clouds directed by Mikio Naruse is released. * Herbert Marcuse publishes Eros and Civilizaton. * Aldous Huxley does LSD for the first time. * Kenji Mizoguchi releases New Tales from the Taira Clan. * Emmett Till is murdered by white racists. * British Government White Paper on the Burgess-Maclean Affair. * Conservative National Review founded. * Detroit manufacturers sell 7,920,000 automobiles. * South Vietnamese Army of civilian dictator President Ngô Đình Diệm defeats militias of religious sects in control of parts of South Vietnam. Enjoying the support of the Republican Eisenhower administration Diệm conducts a fraudulent referendum establishing South Vietnam as a republic with himself as president. He wins 98% of the vote. The Saturday Evening Post describes Diệm as a "mandarin in a sharkskin suit who's upsetting the Red timetable." Timeline January * January 18: Chinese People's Liberation Army launches an improvised amphibious landing and occupation of Yijiangshan Island with 4000 troops. This leads the U.S. Congress to adopt the Formosa Resolution on January 29, 1955. February * February: John F. Kennedy undergoes second back operation during which he comes close to death. During his recovery writes Profiles in Courage, which wins the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography. * February 8: Soviet Premier Malenkov is forced to resign in favor of Marshal Bulganin. Malenkov remains in the Politburo. * February 12: Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends first U.S. military advisors to South Vietnam. * February 14-16: Second Bern Incident. March * March 2: Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk abdicates his throne to participate directly in politics. May * May 9: Federal Republic of Germany formally joins NATO. * May 11: Former Romanian Iron Guardist (fascist) Viorel Trifa is allowed to deliver the convocation prayer in the U.S. Senate. * May 13: NAACP activist Rev. George W. Lee is assassinated in Mississippi. * May 14: In response to the integration of West Germany into NATO, the Warsaw Pact military alliance is formed. * May 15: Fidel Castro and other Moncada prisoners are freed from prison in Cuba. June * June 1: The Untouchability Act passed by the India]n Parliament comes into legal force to eliminate discrimination against dalits. * June 9: Speaking at Iowa State College, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asserts that, "neutrality has increasingly become an obsolete and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception." July * July 7: Fidel Castro arrives in Mexico. * July 16: Janet McCain, the future Janet Huckabee, is born in Hope, Arkansas. August * August 14: NAACP activist Lamar Smith was assassinated in Mississippi. * August 24: Future 2008 Great White Hope of the Christian Right, Mike Huckabee, is born in Hope, Arkansas. * August 24: In Money, Mississippi, in Tallahatchee County. 14 old Emmett Till is murdered by two white men after he dared to whistle at and address a 21 year old white female store clerk as "baby." * August 25: As per the terms of Austrian State Treaty, the last Soviet Red Army units depart from now neutral Austria. Perhaps Dulles was wrong was neutrality. September * September 6-7: Turkish secret services launch a pogrom to drive out the remaining ethnic Greek population in the Republic of Turkey. * September 12: Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. * September 23: After 67 minutes of deliberation an all white jury sitting in a courtroom packed with 400 whites acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milan of the murder of Emmett Till. Tallatachee County was 60% African-American. * September 27: Egypt announces a major arms agreement with Czechoslovakia. October * October 13: Allen Ginsberg reads portions of Howl to the audience of the Six Gallery in San Francisco. * October 25: British Conservative MP for Brixton, Col. Marcus Lipton accuses Kim Philby of being a Soviet spy in the floor of Parliament. Philby faces down his accuser, demands proof from Lipton at a press conference two weeks later after parliamentary debate) and Lipton backs down and retracts the charge. Philby is a Soviet spy and remains at large for years only to later escape to the Soviet Union. November * November 25: 82 revolutionaries leave from Tuxpan, Mexico bound for Cuba on the yacht "Granma." December * December 1: Rosa Parks takes a seat towards the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. * December 2: The "Granma" reaches Las Coloradas beach in Cuba's Oriente province. The revolutionaries are attacked by Batista's troops and must disperse into the woods. Che Guevara is wounded. * December 5: Montgomery Bus Boycott begins. Will last until December 21, 1956.